Grand Theft Auto V Review

There are two aspects of GTA V that truly set it apart from pretty much any other game currently on the market. I’ll start with the first one which is the sheer size and depth of the map that the game takes place in, The massive map may be a technical achievement, but if the people and characters that inhabit it don’t feel real or alive, map size effectively becomes a hindrance to the overall experience. That was one of my biggest issues with GTA IV, the world didn’t really feel alive to me, so I always felt like I was playing a morbid version of The Truman Show.

Luckily GTA V remedies this previous situation in almost every conceivable way. NPC’s feel like they’re actual people unaware of the fact that they’re in a video game. In the time that it took me to essentially drive from one end of the map to the other, I saw cops pull over someone for speeding, I saw a man being robbed at gunpoint, I saw hikers climbing the slopes of Mount Chiliad, I’ll stop there because I could keep this list going on forever. I just loved that for once in a video game the world didn’t seem to be revolving around the characters I was playing as.

The other potentially challenging aspect of the the game that Rockstar effortlessly tackles are the three characters you’ll play as. Being that GTA V is such a long game, Rockstar has given itself ample time to flesh out all three of it’s wildly different characters. While I felt that it was pretty clear early on that Michael was the centerpiece of the three playable protagonists, by the end it was a pretty tough call to make. While the three character’s distinctly unique personalities really helped push their individual stories forward, the pieces of the map that they are all introduced in really helps to keep the intricacies of who they are from bleeding over and confusing the player as the main arc is so long.

Franklin comes from the hood and he wants to get out, a conquest that his friend Lamar gives him new motivation for almost daily. Trevor purposely secludes himself in the middle of the desert to run his meth business, away from non-corrupt police and people who actually care about such practices. Michael is, as he puts it, “Rich and miserable,” living out day after each boring day in his life of retirement from bank robbing. Franklin and Michael, for better or worse, are coming unhinged as they age, and the much younger Franklin is the glue that holds them together. The expert voice acting definitely doesn’t hurt, either.

That’s what really holds the game together, the expert writing. Every time I was edging closer to the cliffs of boredom, Trevor would imitate Michael’s mobster accent, or Franklin would reveal more about his reasons for wanting to leave the Gangster life, or Michael would drop a line from some of the great heist movies of the 1980′s. Whereas previous Rockstar games like GTA IV, or Red Dead Redemption started to lose me just as the end was about to start revealing itself, GTA V kept me hooked from start to finish.

There are so many tiny additions to GTA V that make it a truly special experience that it’s hard for me to pick the best ones. Car customization makes a return to the series, but while it was extremely challenging to keep your pimped out rides in GTA: San Andreas, Trevor, Michael and Franklin each have their own rides that spawn at their houses. That means that once customized with body, engine, wheel and cosmetic upgrades, the cars will spawn with said upgrades from that point forward.

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There are so many tiny additions to GTA V that make it a truly special experience that it’s hard for me to pick the best ones.

Then there’s the in-game stock market. While the LCN market is only manipulated by in-game events, the BAWSAQ market is directly influenced by players online. The two markets both provide ways to make some good money over time, especially when Franklin starts working as Lester’s personal assassin later in the game. There’s just so much you can do besides playing through the story in GTA V that when I completed the game I had the resounding feeling that I had barely even scratched the surface of what it had to offer.

It’s undeniable that such a massive game can’t go without its flaws. To begin with, Rockstar has always been known to create an extremely cynical, and extremely satirical version of America for the Grand Theft Auto series to take place in. Sometimes throughout the main campaign of GTA V, these aspects of the game felt a little overdone. While it was cool to see the inside of the headquarters GTA universes’ version of Facebook, things like Michael killing the in game equivalent to Steve Jobs and Trevor constantly going on and on about how awful the American government is felt a little bit over the top to me.

Another thing that bothered me was that a few of the missions felt like they were included just to extend the game’s longevity. For example, in one mission Trevor is tasked with stealing a submarine to use as a getaway vehicle in a heist he’s setting up at the time. It literally took almost 13 minutes to drive the submarine from point A to point B, and I gained absolutely nothing from it. There’s also another mission Trevor is tasked with during the setup fro the same heist where he is forced to do the job of a dock worker. The fact that something like that CAN be done in a video game is cool and all, but whether it SHOULD have been a mission that was included in the game is something that needs to be called into question. Aside from the over-the-top satire and the occasional boring mission, however, the game is still nothing short of impeccable.

As a sum of its parts, Grand Theft Auto V was an absolute joy to play from start to finish. After the credits rolled, the ending I picked for the three protagonists had me smiling until I fell asleep that night, and then still when I woke up the next morning. With the prospect of dropping $500 dollars on a PlayStation 4 in just a month, I was set on the idea of selling my PlayStation 3 to help cover a bit of the cost. Grand Theft Auto V has convinced me that even entertaining such an idea was incredibly stupid.

The experience that Rockstar Games has created with GTA V is so much farther ahead than many of the games we’ve seen this generation, that it really brings the upcoming generation of gaming closer to earth. As I started knocking off some of the side-quests that I had skipped so that I could get through the game to review it, I was fully confident in the fact that I would be playing this game for months to come.

10/10 (PlayStation 3, Xbox 360)

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